Humanitarian Aid?

[vox]

Published on Monday, October 8, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Aid Agencies Reject 'Risky' US Air Drops
Plea for borders to be reopened after air strikes
by Jonathan Steele and Felicity Lawrence

The launch of military attacks on Afghanistan will worsen the humanitarian crisis in the country and plans for air drops of aid will be "virtually useless" as an aid strategy, leading British aid agencies warned yesterday.
Instead America and Britain should assign clear corridors on the ground and ensure safe passage for aid to flow in and for refugees to return home without any danger of being hit by air strikes, senior aid workers said.

Most of Britain's aid agencies were unwilling to comment on the wisdom of yesterday's attacks because of their non-political status, although they believe that fears of the action against Afghanistan greatly exacerbated the country's humanitarian crisis.

They urged that Pakistan and other neighboring countries be persuaded to reopen their borders to refugees if disaster is to be averted.


This is the U.S. 'Humanitarian Daily Ration' package of food that U.S. Defense Department said were dropped over Afghanistan, October 7, 2001. Each package contains Beans with Tomato Sauce, Beans and Tomato Vinaigrette, Biscuit, Fruit Pastry, Fruit Bar, Short Bread, Peanut Butter, Strawberry Jam, and utensils package including salt, pepper, napkin and a match. According to Defense Department 37,500 of the HDR packages were delivered over Afghanistan. (Hyungwon Kang/Reuters)

Will Day, chief executive of Care International, said yesterday: "Air drops make great TV but they often represent a failure to respond to a food crisis."

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's director, said all aid should be channeled through the UN "to be seen as impartial and separate from military action. Trucking of food is cheaper and is tried and tested. Air drops are risky, random, expensive, and likely to meet only a fraction of the need. Aid workers would be put in a difficult position if food aid came to be viewed as part of a military effort".

Mohammed Kroessin, the director of Muslim Aid, which has already raised £500,000 in aid, said the military action "will cause immense suffering to millions of starving people. Air drops will not be useful". The director of the Catholic charity, Cafod, Julian Filichowski, said: "It is a matter of fact that even the threat of military action has made the humanitarian situation worse. The start of military attacks on Afghanistan, even if limited, will exacerbate problems."

Save the Children's director-general, Mike Aaronson, said it was not the charity's job to say whether military action should have taken place.

But he added that his organization had urged restraint on the grounds that military action inevitably results in civilian casualties and suffering, and all possible alternatives should be explored first. The threat of military action has already had serious consequences, causing many people to leave the urban areas of Afghanistan.

All of the dozen agencies contacted by the Guardian yesterday wanted Afghanistan's borders to be reopened immediately.

"States in the region must honor their obligations under the refugee convention and ensure that those seeking refuge from Afghanistan are allowed to enter their borders," Mr Aaronson said.

Cafod said the launching of air strikes while the borders were still closed would leave people who were already starving stranded without access to aid. "We would remind the international community that international humanitarian law obliges those who take armed action to make sure that civilians have access to humanitarian aid."

Pakistan, Iran and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan closed their borders in line with an American request early in the crisis.

Their governments were willing to go along with Washington because of fears of a massive refugee influx which they could not control.

The executive director of World Vision, Charles Clayton, said: "As a Christian humanitarian organization we never advocate the use of military force. But we remind western forces of their obligations to civilians under the Geneva convention."

Christian Aid said military force "could only be justified as a last resort as a means of bringing guilty men to justice" but "in the short term it will inevitably make the humanitarian situation worse".

Secure conditions were essential for the transport of supplies, which meant open borders and agreement by those inside and outside the country that aid convoys would move unmolested.

"Any offensive military action or threat of military action makes it impossible to deliver these conditions," said director Daleep Mukarjee.

"The most vital need is to prevent people becoming refugees by getting humanitarian aid to their home areas and remove the fear of conflict which is combining with hunger to drive people from their homes."

Tearfund's international services director, Ian Wallace, said a delay in military action would give more time for relief infrastructures to be established.

Every agency was keen to separate humanitarian aid from the military, arguing that provision of aid was not a job for armies and air forces during a conflict.

Humanitarian crisis

Population 20.9m

Under-five mortality one in four (fourth worst in the world, highest outside Africa)

Children under five with malnutrition 35% (before current crisis)

Maternal mortality 1,700 per 100,000 (worst in world after Sierra Leone)

Life expectancy at birth 40-45 years

Access to basic health services 29% of population

Access to safe water 12% of population

Sources: WHO 1998, UNICEF 1998, Afghanistan field guide, ed Girardet

(edited because I posted wrong piece, oops!)

(Edited by vox at 6:55 pm on Oct. 8, 2001)

[Chancho]

Great article - thanks vox

Perfect illustration of how the US has missed the point yet again... and of course, to the detriment of those who live there.

Very interesting to know the nutritious and thoughtful contents of the 'humanitarian daily rations' - perhaps the US gov should ask McDonalds to do its humanitarian duty - just visualise little brown packages emblazoned with the golden arches raining down on Afghanistan - then they can get a taste of what they're missing. Would you like fries with that?

[RedCeltic]

Yes thank you vox for posting that! I am always delighted when people post great articles like this. Now that the new Che-Lives bb is four months old it seems we have grown quite a bit and have atracted some enlighted people.

And Choncho's comment... " Want fries with that?"... LoL... Ahhh tis brilliant lass...

[vox]

I'm glad you liked it.

I try not to put too many articles up. It can be annoying, so I will leaves links instead, but sometimes things are too important.

Peace can win. But we can't just keep it in our hearts. We need to keep it in our mouths, too.

vox

[Chancho]

From the Sydney Morning Herald - 10.10.01

The quality of mercy: food drops in minefields

Aid agencies say the US relief operation is dangerous and cynical, Christopher Kremmer reports.

The American food aid drops over Afghanistan have been criticised as a potentially lethal stop-gap to humanise its bombing campaign.

Aid agencies operating inside the country are concerned that some of the ration packs being dropped along with US bombs may be landing in unmapped minefields.

"When the food lands, these desperately hungry Afghan people will simply rush towards it. Women and children are the most vulnerable," said Alhaj Fazel, a spokesman for the respected de-mining organisation OMAR.

At best, say aid workers, the nightly drops of 37,000 ready-to-eat packs of dried, meatless gruel are inadequate. At worst, they are a cynical stunt.

"This is not a humanitarian operation. It is part of a military campaign designed to gather international approval of the attacks ... It is virtually useless and may even be dangerous," said the medical aid group Médicins Sans Frontières in a statement issued in Paris.

The bright yellow one-kilogram plastic food packets stamped with the Stars and Stripes flutter down to earth from American C-17 military transport planes that have flown from the Ramstein air base in Germany.

A silhouette image of a man eating from a spoon gives illiterate villagers the idea that this is food, while a message in several languages - none of them local - explains: "This is a food gift from the people of the United States of America."

Moist towelettes are provided to assist recipients in freshening up after their meal of bean salad, barley stew and bread.

Before September 11, some 3.5 million Afghans rocked by war, drought and Taliban maladministration were dependent on UN-delivered food.

The food drops are occurring in what US officials say are zones for displaced people in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

But aid workers say the air drops take no account of the landmine infestation which makes so much of the countryside so dangerous.

The unintentional parallels with an earlier Afghan war are eerie.

Soviet forces which invaded the country in 1979 were infamous for scattering shiny metallic landmines across the countryside. The mines, which sparkled gaily in the sunshine and exploded if picked up, attracted Afghan children like magnets.

The United Nations has announced the indefinite suspension of food deliveries because of the threat the US-led attacks pose to its staff.

Some aid agencies are in a quandary about how to respond to the US aid.

"It's a very welcome initiative, but at the same time what are we going to see for the longer term?" said Patrick Fuller, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

But others, such as the British-based Oxfam agency, are publicly opposing the food-plus-bombs strategy.
"It's certainly not something that we can applaud. Untargeted food drops are one of the worst delivery strategies. They're prohibitively expensive and should only be used as a last resort," said Oxfam's Pakistan-based spokesman, Alex Renton.

Oxfam says 10 times as much food could be trucked in daily if the bombing was stopped.

"The strikes have to stop, obviously. Our politicians must make it possible for aid workers to help the needy," Mr Renton says.

With only a six-week window of opportunity to build up food stocks before winter, aid workers believe the military campaign threatens to create a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Red Cross is echoing the concern. It says its 48 clinics inside Afghanistan will run out of essential medicines within two weeks unless deliveries can resume.

On one issue the aid agencies are unanimous, insisting the Pakistan Government open its border to allow Afghans to reach help, if real help cannot reach them.

[ViktorPravda]

Two great articles. Thank you.